After multiple release delays, Wonder Woman 1984 made its debut in theaters and on HBO Max on Friday, giving DC fans the gift of the latest DC Comics-inspired film for Christmas. The film is full of a lot of details, references, and action in its nearly three-hour runtime, answering some questions teased in the trailers for the film as well as fully delivering on things we only got the briefest glimpses of — including Wonder Woman’s (Gal Gadot) Golden Eagle armor. The film lets viewers see the armor in all its glory, but more than that explains exactly what it is, where it came from, and how Diana comes to have it.
Warning: Spoilers for Wonder Woman 1984 below. Quit reading now if you don’t want to see those spoilers!
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The Golden Eagle Armor is actually teased in the opening sequence of Wonder Woman 1984 which sees a young Diana participate in the Amazon’s Olympics-type event, though the young girl ends up learning a valuable lesson when she is disqualified for cheating as she takes a shortcut. Her mother tells her that even “the Golden Warrior Asteria did not become a warrior out of haste”, referring to a statue of an Amazon wearing a version of the Golden Eagle Armor.
That warrior, Asteria, comes into the story again a bit later. While trying to come up with a plan to stop Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) without having to relinquish her wish and, thus, let go of the newly-returned Steve Trevor (you can read more about how exactly Steve returns here) Diana goes into a private area of her apartment to watch various television feeds. Steve joins her and immediately notices a very large, wrapped object leaning against one wall and promptly asks Diana about it.
As Diana explains, in ancient times, the Amazons were enslaved by man and it’s Asteria who decides to hold back the humans so that her Amazon sisters can escape, sacrificing herself in the process. The armor that Asteria wore — the Golden Eagle Armor — was created from the armor of all of the enslaved Amazons who gave it forge that one epic suit. While the others escaped to Themyscira, Asteria apparently died saving them. Diana tells Steve she’s looked for Asteria, but only ever found her armor.
It’s interesting, then, that Diana later puts on that armor when she goes to face off with Maxwell Lord and Barbara Minerva/Cheetah (Kristen Wiig). The armor that Asteria used to fight humanity, Diana wears into her battle to save it.
“You call it the Golden Eagle Armor, but actually I just call it the Golden Armor,” Wonder Woman 1984 costume designer Lindy Hemming told ComicBook.com earlier this year. “It’s the most powerful protection armor that was worn by her mother originally and somehow or other in the story, which I don’t want to sort of give away, it ends up being with [Diana] in Washington. And so, when she’s really threatened by everything she resorts to wearing the Golden Armor, and that was a fabulous challenge to design it because when I inherited Wonder Woman, the first one, obviously Michael Wilkinson had already worked and done a design for Wonder Woman’s armor, from the cut what she looks like in the comic. So, I had to inherit and modify that.”
“Every single piece of it is real, including the underbody suit, which looks almost like it’s been put on digitally, but it isn’t,” Hemming continued. “And then of course, during the filming and in the work afterwards…the suit is enhanced sometimes I feel, although I haven’t seen the film, so, but I would have imagined that because we were trying so hard, I wanted to have, partly wanted to have this sort of magical quality about it, instead of it just looking like a suit of armor, because it’s coming from the magical goddess past. We made it in a fabric, which Pierre Bohanna had invented a way of using gold and a mirror effect. So, every piece was like a mirror, but the challenge was the mirror couldn’t show the crew. So, you can imagine it was really, really complicated. Because anytime she was wearing it, you must not be able to see cameras or lights or anything, you know. Anyway, he had invented this fabric, which somehow is mirror-like, but does not reflect in a clear way. You sort of feel it swirling almost hence the posters with the kind of swirling look to them. And it seemed like it was very, very ’80s to do that. And that’s the period we’re dealing with of course. So, it was a crossover between a really ’80s glitzy marvelous thing, and a sort of magical almost sometimes translucent almost sometimes disappearing and being able to be seen technical fabric.”
What do you think of this new look at Wonder Woman 1984‘s Golden Eagle armor? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
